In many instances, items potentially presenting an explosive hazard (MPPEH), such as an ordnance, are located in remote areas or in areas that make it unfeasible to move the ordnance, or other items, from a safety and/or economic standpoint. As a result, it is often necessary to bring equipment to the location of the item to determine if it is inert or to render it safe. Waterjet cutting equipment is a preferred type of equipment used to investigate such items. Waterjet technology is useful for the cutting of items, such as military shells, into small pieces that can then be inspected to determine the energetic/hazardous material content if unknown. Aside from determining the internal contents of items, waterjet technology is useful for cutting live ordnance into smaller pieces so that these pieces can be further processed.
Previous systems utilized to access and segment ordnance and MPPEH items in remote areas have not been outfitted with state of the art technology to accomplish the work. They have typically utilized very basic high pressure waterjet technology, or a lesser technology, that is inherently unsafe, in order to field a system. Such systems are typically operated at relatively low rates and are generally inefficient in the field, thus adding significantly to the costs of the operation. Upgrades to such technology, with state of the art components, to create a new processing scheme is necessary to place a system on the market that is efficient, safe, and environmentally compliant enough to alleviate shortcomings of the prior art.
Two high pressure waterjet system technologies have been utilized to process MPPEH items in a remote, field, or unimproved area. The first of these is a so-called first generation system developed by Gradient Technology of Elk River, Minn. that affixed a high pressure waterjet head to a ring, which is used to cut around the circumference of the item to be accessed. That system is inefficient because of the requirement of manual positioning of the high pressure waterjet head by operators prior to every operational step. Additionally, this system was not environmentally friendly because of the difficulty of capturing the high pressure waterjet stream as it rotated about the item.
The other system was simple high pressure waterjet head used by PIKA International for MPPEH clean-up work in Puerto Rico. That system was used to access small items with a fixed high pressure waterjet head to investigate the internals of the items. It was not built to process large MPPEH items that pose greater problems during demilitarization.
While some systems exist for demilitarizing large pieces of ordnance in the field, there still exists a need in the art for improved systems that are more cost effective, safer and/or environmentally compliant.